The Economic Relations Division will hold separate meetings with the development partners next month involving the implementing agencies concerned as part of its initiative to monitor the progress of foreign-aided projects.
The initiative has been taken from the beginning of the current fiscal to ensure expected implementation of the projects as well as timely disbursement of funds by the donors, an official told the news agency.
He said they had taken the initiative to avoid rush in implementing the projects at the fag end of the financial year. 'Rush of expenditure on development projects also raised question about the quality of work.'
He informed that the foreign aid disbursement in the last fiscal was unlikely to reach the government target, which would also be discussed with the development partners.
The schedule of meetings with the donors will be finalised within this month.
According to ERD, disbursement of foreign aid declined by about half a billion US dollars in the first 11 months of the last fiscal year to $1.43 billion from $1.86 billion in the corresponding period of previous year. The aid inflow target for the last fiscal was $ 2.34 billion.
It is assumed that weak projection was mainly responsible for sharp decline in availability of external aid.
The last fiscal witnessed a steady uptrend on aid commitments though disbursements faltered seriously resulting in accumulation of aid in the pipeline.
Bangladesh signed aid agreements for an aggregate amount of $4.87 billion under various deals for different projects between July 2010 and May 2011 with bilateral and multilateral donors including the World Bank, the Asian Develop-ment Bank and Japan.
The major chunk of the committed aid during the year is related to the Padma Multipurpose Bridge project.
Source : New Age
No comments:
Post a Comment